Health authorities have recently recommended that trans fats be reduced in diets because they present health risks. In response, the food industry has largely replaced the use of trans fats with zero trans fats. Trans fats being defined as unsaturated fat with trans-isomer fatty acid(s). Food products with zero trans fat is defined by the United States Food and Drug Administration in the regulation 21 CFR 101.9 (c)(2)(ii) to “contain less than 0.5 gram of total fat in a serving” and that “trans fat content information is not required for products that contain less than 0.5 gram of total fat in a serving” and “if the serving contains less than 0.5 gram, the content, when declared, shall be expressed as zero.” Manufacturers desiring a level of fat in food products higher than the 0.5 gram (adjusted for the level of trans fat in a given fat used in the food product) per serving are required to use fats with low trans fat content or zero trans fats. (Fats defined as zero trans fats by those skilled in the art will generally, by the nature of the processing required for these fats, contain relatively small amounts of trans fats.) While the use of zero trans fats in food products is good for consumers, it is problematic for the food industry, because food processing equipment and/or environmental surfaces become contaminated with polymerized zero trans fats soils, which are very difficult to clean. Zero trans fats are less stable and more prone to degradation and polymerization than trans fats or saturated fats. Zero trans fats can be left on ambient or cold surfaces for an extended period of time and polymerize on these surfaces creating a difficult to clean soil. The longer a zero trans fats soil is left to polymerize on a surface, the more difficult it becomes to remove the soil from that surface. Mists of zero trans fats emanating from a hot zero trans fat source can also collect onto various surfaces and polymerize over time on these surfaces. The surfaces collecting these mists can be at cold, hot or ambient temperatures and create difficult to clean soils on all of these surfaces. Zero trans fats can be burnt onto cooking surfaces and then polymerize over time at an increased rate compared to a surface at a lower temperature and create soils that are more difficult to remove than trans fat or saturated fat based soils. In addition, other food materials such as proteins, carbohydrates and other fats can be mixed in with the zero trans fats which, as they polymerize can also create complicated, hard to remove soils and residues.
Those employing frying and baking operations are particularly affected by zero trans fats soils, because they use zero trans fats in high volumes. Also, these operations commonly route zero trans fats through tanks, lines, pumps and other processing equipment, which must be periodically cleaned but can in some operations go a significant amount of time between cleanings as required by the specific production process. In addition, other equipment, especially high, out of place piping, duct work (external as well as internal), roofs and ceilings, heating, cooling and air conditioning surfaces (HVAC), product freezers and coolers and many other surfaces in food manufacturing sites, can sometimes be left for days, weeks or months without thorough cleaning, collecting zero trans fat contamination and forming extremely hard to remove, polymerized zero trans fat soils. These soils can be so difficult to remove that in some cases, it would be less expensive to replace equipment than to pay for the intensive labor required to clean properly. In order to permit food production operations to continue without major changes to equipment and food processing facility designs, a new method of cleaning is needed to permit extended food production time and to retain a safe, clean food processing environment.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a cleaning composition that can disrupt the structure of polymerized zero trans fats soils to adequately remove this type of soil and thereby clean surfaces. It would also be desirable to provide cleaning systems and methods to remove polymerized zero trans fats soils, particularly soils that are on hard to access equipment.